HYDERABAD: The number of Covid-19 deaths in the country as of Sunday was 4,20,551, as per the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
The researchers, who took up a survey on Covid-19 deaths across the country, compared the number of deaths due to all causes, which occurred during the peak months of the first and second waves of the pandemic in the years 2020 and 2021, with the number of deaths during the corresponding months of the previous years (2015-2019) in order to determine the excess number of deaths. Statistical methods were applied to extrapolate the data and arrive at a national figure.
The data used for the study was obtained from the Civil Registration System (CRS), the Health Management Information System of the Mo-HFW and a nationally representative survey that was undertaken for the study by CVoter, an organisation that is known for its polling surveys. Nearly 1.4 lakh people participated in the survey. As per the pre-print paper, the researchers took the help of journalists and NGOs to obtain the CRS data from the government, as it is still not available in the public domain.